Killing animals is bad karma. Presuming these chimeras are meant to be used as spare parts, killing must be involved. As for the creepiness factor, I'm not so perturbed. What happens to animals in factory farms is far more gruesome.

"All the suffering of the lower realms, whatever difficulty and unhappiness we may experience as human beings, as well as every other possible suffering of the three realms of existence, have their origin in cherishing ourselves more than others."

I remember hearing a few years back that the 20th century was the century of physics, whereas the 21st century is going to be the century of biology. Every indication to date is that this prediction is going to pan out.

I teach an intro to computers class where I spend a session talking about advances and trends in computing. One trend is to treat genetic code as a kind of computer code that can be manipulated just like any computer code. Here is a brief video I show my students.

Synthetic biology and genetic engineering are quickly maturing fields. Actual engineered chimeras are demonstrations of the thinking that snippets of DNA computer code from one organism (computer program) can be reused in other organisms (computer programs).

Animal-human hybrids, world domination, discrimination, the fight for rights, dystopian themes. Would make a good sci fi movie. Or an interesting potential future. More and more unrealistic possibilities are becoming realistically possible.

I have heard it said (although it might be apocryphal) that someone asked Craig Venter (a famous biologist who decoded DNA and wants to synthesise life) if he wasn't worried about 'playing God'. 'I'm not playing', he was said to have replied.

Something that not many people are aware is (was?) the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) project to determine the minimum genome for cellular life (which could eventually be synthesized). I have no idea what the status of the project is today, but here is a quarterly report by Venter's company from a few years ago, going into a fair amount of detail on how they were gradually pruning the genome of a cell to reach a minimal count. Here is the abstract, giving some flavor of the nature of the research,

We are working towards the goal of creating a bacterium that contains only the set of genes that are essential for life. Toward that end, we
have continued to delete genes and gene clusters from the starting genome (M. mycoides JCVI-syn1.0). To date, the smallest viable genome is 779 kbp, representing a ~30% reduction. The transplanted cells were later found to grow slowly compared to wild type, after being transferred from solid media to liquid. We have made several additional single gene deletions to this genome, but we have begun to explore adding genes back into the 779 kbp genome in order to restore growth rates.

We have also made progress on the design and synthesis of a minimal genome (483 kbp). Transplantation experiments using the previously reported 1/8th minimized genome molecules are complete. One of the 1/8th molecules proved to be viable. A more conservative design of a minimal genome (623kbp) has been completed, and synthesis is underway.

I think Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' was enormously prescient. But then you've got to balance that against the many people who have been saved by heart transplants, genetic therapies and so on. I suppose it's a double-edged sword, like all knowledge.

"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."The Supreme Source - The Kunjed Gyalpo
The Fundamental Tantra of Dzogchen Semde

For me, the stuff they are doing with the bacteria is a hell of a lot more frightening than growing organs with stem cells. Infinitely more stupid and dangerous.

"My religion is not deceiving myself."Jetsun Milarepa 1052-1135 CE

"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."The Supreme Source - The Kunjed Gyalpo
The Fundamental Tantra of Dzogchen Semde